Welcome to the Office of the Provost

Where are you headed?

Yogi Berra once quipped: "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going because you might not get there." Behind this folk wisdom is an underlying truth: it's important to have a sense of your goals and how to accomplish them. Bucknell is clear about its mission — providing superior liberal arts education — and about our goals for our students. Our faculty and staff have endorsed specific learning goals for our academic enterprise and educational goals for our co-curricular effort. Our faculty, staff, students, parents, and alumni work to assure that our students achieve these goals at Bucknell and beyond.

Psychologist Howard Gardner suggests that we must cultivate five mental capacities to thrive personally and professionally in the 21st century: a disciplined mind; a synthesizing mind; a creating mind; a respectful mind; and an ethical mind. Our curricular and co-curricular programs are designed to assure that each Bucknellian has developed these capacities, drawing on our distinctive blend of professional and liberal arts programs.

Welcome to Bucknell's academic and student affairs activities. We hope that you will agree that we are clear about where we are headed and that it's a good direction for you.

Mick Smyer
Provost